Top-10 NFL Draft pick helped determine Steelers' draft plans
The NFL Draft is like watching the Domino effect transpire before your eyes. Every pick, every decision, impacts what the next decision may become. And the stakes are never higher than when the first round takes place. Runs on positions are the clearest example of when this happens. If a team is targeting a position […]
The NFL Draft is like watching the Domino effect transpire before your eyes. Every pick, every decision, impacts what the next decision may become. And the stakes are never higher than when the first round takes place.
Runs on positions are the clearest example of when this happens. If a team is targeting a position of need, and players at that position are coming off the board quickly in seemingly consecutive fashion, that inspires action.
Action much like the Steelers trading up three picks for Georgia left tackle Broderick Jones.
Pittsburgh sacrificed just a fourth-round pick to swap first-round picks with the New England Patriots and take Jones, a player the team "coveted," according to head coach Mike Tomlin.
In an interview on the Rich Eisen Show, Tomlin explained that the Chicago Bears selection of Tennessee offensive tackle Darnell Wright was the start of the run on offensive tackles, and the Steelers' suspected belief of Jones being a target of the New York Jets created the urgency to move up for Jones.
"Yeah, we were speculating there," Tomlin told Eisen, a known Jets fan. "And plus, you know, there was a run on the position starting, I think with Darnell Wright at about [pick] 10 where they were coming off pretty clean, and we just had that as a position of priority. And we had Broderick as an individual priority. And so we knew with the acquisition of Aaron Rodgers and so forth, they might be fishing in those waters. And so we we did what we thought we needed to do to get the player in the position that we coveted."
The need to jump New York may not have been as great had the run on tackles not started as early as it did. Wright was projected to go sometime in the first round, but 10th overall to Chicago was definitely on the high-end of his projection.
Once Wright went off the board, Peter Skoronski followed him as the Tennessee Titans made him the very next pick. And instead of waiting around to see if New York would go in a different direction, they made the move to get their guy.
Jones became the starting point for a critically-acclaimed draft class for Pittsburgh. Joey Porter Jr., Keeanu Benton, Darnell Washington, and more soon joined Jones to form a talented crop of rookies. The class might've looked a lot different had Jones ended up as a Jet instead of a Steeler.
